Roderick Edward Maclean (c. 1854 – 8 June 1921) was a Scotsman who attempted to assassinateQueen Victoria on 2 March 1882, at Windsor, England, with a pistol. This was the last of eight attempts by separate people to kill or assault Victoria over a period of four decades. Maclean's motive was purportedly a curt reply to some poetry that he had mailed to the Queen.[4]

The attempted murder followed the arrival of the Royal train, conveying the Queen, Princess Beatrice and the Court from Windsor. Queen Victoria had just walked across the platform of Windsor station to a carriage in waiting when Maclean, who was standing at the entrance of the station yard among a number of spectators, deliberately fired a revolver at her; the shot missed, and Maclean was seized by Chief Superintendent Hayes, of the Borough Police, and the weapon wrenched from his grasp by someone in the crowd. – Birmingham Daily Gazette, 1921[5]

Other accounts state that the revolver was a toy and that his aim was disrupted by an Eton schoolboy:

The weapon was a mere toy, and the life the beloved monarch was not seriously endangered. A number of Eton boys were round the station at the time, and one of them rushed forward and struck Maclean with his umbrella, disconcerting his aim — which was unlikely enough, in any case, to have been accurate; the boy in question, Gordon Wilson, was called to the Castle by her Majesty and thanked for his promptitude. He was the son of Sir Samuel Wilson, the Australian wool magnate, who introduced salmon into the Australian rivers and afterwards sat in Parliament for a short time for Portsmouth. Gordon Wilson married Lady Sarah Spencer-Churchill, a sister of Lord Randolph and Lady Wimborne, he was killed in the early days of the war. The wretched lunatic, therefore, survived all the other chief actors in his poor little drama, paying dearly for his brief notoriety, he had, however, the distinction of undergoing trial for high treason. – Lichfield Mercury, 1921[6]

At his trial, Dr. Charles Vernon Hitchins testified that MacLean had been certified insane in June 1880, two years before the attempted assassination, and he had been sent to Somerset Lunatic Asylum, he was living 14, Wadham Street in Weston-super-Mare. Dr. Hitchins stated that Maclean was complaining of headaches and believed that all the people in England are against him, and he felt he must injure someone because they are conspiring to deceive him, he had also sent letters to his sister in 1880, Caroline Maclean, stating that, "If I cannot commit a murder one way, I will another way, and all can add is, if there is more difficulty, there may be more victims." Multiple doctors also testified that Maclean was insane and "did not believe he was capable of appreciating the nature or quality of any act which he might commit."[1]

Tried for high treason on 20 April, the Scotsman was found "not guilty, but insane" by a jury after five minutes' deliberation, overseen by Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. and he lived out his remaining days in Broadmoor Asylum. The verdict prompted the Queen to ask for a change in English law so that those implicated in cases with similar outcomes would be considered as "guilty, but insane"; this led to the Trial of Lunatics Act 1883.[7][8]

The Scottish people or Scots, are a nation and Celtic ethnic group native to Scotland. They emerged from an amalgamation of two Celtic-speaking peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th century; the neighbouring Celtic-speaking Cumbrians, as well as Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons and Norse, were incorporated into the Scottish nation. In modern usage, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, family ancestral or genetic origins are from Scotland; the Latin word Scoti referred to the Gaels, but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has been used for Scottish people outside Scotland. John Kenneth Galbraith in his book The Scotch documents the descendants of 19th-century Scottish pioneers who settled in Southwestern Ontario and affectionately referred to themselves as'Scotch', he states the book was meant to give a true picture of life in the community in the early decades of the 20th century.

People of Scottish descent live in many countries. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, latterly industrial decline and unemployment, have resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Scottish emigrants took with them their Scottish languages and culture. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America and New Zealand. Canada has the highest level of Scottish descendants per capita in the world and the second-largest population of Scottish descendants, after the United States. Scotland has seen settlement of many peoples at different periods in its history; the Gaels, the Picts and the Britons have their respective origin myths, like most medieval European peoples. Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxons, arrived beginning in the 7th century, while the Norse settled parts of Scotland from the 8th century onwards. In the High Middle Ages, from the reign of David I of Scotland, there was some emigration from France and the Low Countries to Scotland.

Some famous Scottish family names, including those bearing the names which became Bruce, Balliol and Stewart came to Scotland at this time. Today Scotland is one of the countries of the United Kingdom, the majority of people living there are British citizens; the highest concentrations of people of Scottish descent in the world outside of Scotland are located in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in Canada and Southland in New Zealand, the Falklands Islands, Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom. In the Early Middle Ages, Scotland saw several ethnic or cultural groups mentioned in contemporary sources, namely the Picts, the Gaels, the Britons, the Angles, with the latter settling in the southeast of the country. Culturally, these peoples are grouped according to language. Most of Scotland until the 13th century spoke Celtic languages and these included, at least the Britons, as well as the Gaels and the Picts. Germanic peoples included the Angles of Northumbria, who settled in south-eastern Scotland in the region between the Firth of Forth to the north and the River Tweed to the south.

They occupied the south-west of Scotland up to and including the Plain of Kyle and their language, Old English, was the earliest form of the language which became known as Scots. Use of the Gaelic language spread throughout nearly the whole of Scotland by the 9th century, reaching a peak in the 11th to 13th centuries, but was never the language of the south-east of the country. King Edgar divided the Kingdom of Northumbria between England. South-east of the Firth of Forth in Lothian and the Borders, a northern variety of Old English known as Early Scots, was spoken; as a result of David I, King of Scots' return from exile in England in 1113 to assume the throne in 1124 with the help of Norman military force, David invited Norman families from France and England to settle in lands he granted them to spread a ruling class loyal to him. This Davidian Revolution, as many historians call it, brought a European style of feudalism to Scotland along with an influx of people of Norman descent - by invitation, unlike England where it was by conquest.

To this day, many of the common family names of Scotland can trace ancestry to Normans from this period, such as the Stewarts, the Bruces, the Hamiltons, the Wallaces, the Melvilles, some Browns and many others. The Northern Isles and some parts of Caithness were Norn-speaking. From 1200 to 1500 the Early Scots language spread across the lowland parts of Scotland between Galloway and the Highland line, being used by Barbour in his historical epicThe Brus in the late 14th century in Aberdeen. From 1500 on, Scotland was divided by language into two groups of people, Gaelic-speaking "Highlanders" and the Inglis-speaking "Lowlanders". Today, immigrants have brought other languages, but every adult throughout Scotland is fluent in the English language. Today, Scotland has a population of just over five million people, the majority of whom co

Sir Samuel Wilson was an Irish-born Australianpastoralist and politician, a British Member of Parliament. Wilson was born in Ballycloughan, County Antrim, Ireland, in 1832, he was educated at first intended taking up civil engineering. For three years he worked for a brother-in-law, a linen manufacturer, but in 1852 decided to emigrate to Australia, he arrived in Melbourne in May 1852 and worked on the goldfields, but a few months decided to join two brothers who had preceded him to Australia, had a pastoral property in the Wimmera. He was made manager of one of their holdings, selling a small property he had in Ireland, with his brothers bought Longerenong station for £40,000, he dug waterholes and made dams on the property which much improved and increased its carrying capacity. Yanko station in the Riverina was purchased and much improved. In 1869 Wilson bought his brothers' interests in their stations, afterwards bought other stations in Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland, became wealthy.

They had Randolph Gordon Wilson. The Daily Mail newspaper recruited Lady Sarah after one of its correspondents, Ralph Hellawell, was arrested by the Boers as he tried to get out of the besieged town of Mafeking to send his dispatch, she was in the right place at the right time to step into the journalistic breach, having moved to Mafeking with her husband, Lt.-Col. Gordon Chesney Wilson, at the start of the war, where he was aide-de-camp to Col. Robert Baden-Powell, the commanding officer at Mafeking. Baden-Powell asked her to leave Mafeking for her own safety after the Boers threatened to storm the British garrison; this she duly did, set off on a madcap adventure in the company of her maid, travelling through the South African countryside. She was captured by the Boers and returned to the town in exchange for a horse thief being held there; when she re-entered Mafeking, she found. Instead, over four miles of trenches had been dug and 800 bomb shelters built to protect residents from the constant shelling of the town.

During her stay in the city, she helped with nursing in a convalescent hospital, was wounded when it was shelled by Boer forces in late January 1900. On 26 March 1900, toward the end of the siege, she wrote: The Boers have been active during the last few days. Yesterday we were shelled and suffered eight casualties … CorporalIronside had his thigh smashed the day before, Private Webbe, of the Cape Police, had his head blown off in the brickfields trenches. Although death and destruction surrounded her, the Mail’s fledgling war correspondent preferred not to dwell too much on the horrors of the siege, she described cycling events held on Sundays and the town’s celebration of Colonel Baden-Powell’s birthday, declared a holiday. Despite these cheery events, dwindling food supplies became a constant theme in the stories she sent back to the Mail and the situation seemed hopeless when the garrison was hit by an outbreak of malarial typhoid. In this weakened state the Boers managed to penetrate the outskirts of the town, but the British stood firm and repelled the assault.

The siege ended after 217 days, when the Royal Horse and Canadian Artillery galloped into Mafeking on 17 May 1900. Only a few people standing in a dusty road, singing "Rule, Britannia!", were there to greet their saviours. But in London it was a different scene as more than 20,000 people turned out in the streets to celebrate the relief of Mafeking. In May 1901, Wilson was invested as a Dame of Grace of The Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, in December the same year King Edward VII conferred on her the decoration of the Royal Red Cross for her services in Mafeking, she returned to South Africa with her sister Countess Howe in September 1902. S. J. Taylor; the Great Outsiders: Northcliffe and the Daily Mail. Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-7538-0455-7. Works by Sarah Wilson at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson at Internet Archive Works by or about Lady Sarah Wilson at Internet Archive Works by Sarah Wilson at LibriVox Portrait of Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Wilson, daughter of 7th Duke of Marlborough at the National Portrait Gallery South African Memories

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Both the Duke and the King died in 1820, Victoria was raised under close supervision by her mother, Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, she inherited the throne at the age of 18, after her father's three elder brothers had all died, leaving no surviving legitimate children. The United Kingdom was an established constitutional monarchy, in which the sovereign held little direct political power. Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments. Victoria married her first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840, their nine children married into royal and noble families across the continent, tying them together and earning her the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe". After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria avoided public appearances.

As a result of her seclusion, republicanism temporarily gained strength, but in the latter half of her reign, her popularity recovered. Her Golden and Diamond Jubilees were times of public celebration, her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political and military change within the United Kingdom, was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire, she was the last British monarch of the House of Hanover. Her son and successor, Edward VII, initiated the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the line of his father. Victoria's father was Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of the reigning King of the United Kingdom, George III; until 1817, Edward's niece, Princess Charlotte of Wales, was the only legitimate grandchild of George III. Her death in 1817 precipitated a succession crisis that brought pressure on the Duke of Kent and his unmarried brothers to marry and have children.

In 1818 he married Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a widowed German princess with two children—Carl and Feodora —by her first marriage to the Prince of Leiningen. Her brother Leopold was Princess Charlotte's widower; the Duke and Duchess of Kent's only child, was born at 4.15 a.m. on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Victoria was christened by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton, on 24 June 1819 in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace, she was baptised Alexandrina after one of her godparents, Emperor Alexander I of Russia, Victoria, after her mother. Additional names proposed by her parents—Georgina and Augusta—were dropped on the instructions of Kent's eldest brother, the Prince Regent. At birth, Victoria was fifth in the line of succession after the four eldest sons of George III: George, the Prince Regent; the Prince Regent had no surviving children, the Duke of York had no children. The Duke of Clarence and the Duke of Kent married on the same day in 1818, but both of Clarence's legitimate daughters died as infants.

The first of these was Princess Charlotte, born and died on 27 March 1819, two months before Victoria was born. Victoria's father died in January 1820. A week her grandfather died and was succeeded by his eldest son as George IV. Victoria was third in line to the throne after York and Clarence. Clarence's second daughter was Princess Elizabeth of Clarence who lived for twelve weeks from 10 December 1820 to 4 March 1821 and, while Elizabeth lived, Victoria was fourth in line; the Duke of York died in 1827. When George IV died in 1830, he was succeeded by his next surviving brother, Clarence, as William IV, Victoria became heir presumptive; the Regency Act 1830 made special provision for Victoria's mother to act as regent in case William died while Victoria was still a minor. King William distrusted the Duchess's capacity to be regent, in 1836 he declared in her presence that he wanted to live until Victoria's 18th birthday, so that a regency could be avoided. Victoria described her childhood as "rather melancholy".

Her mother was protective, Victoria was raised isolated from other children under the so-called "Kensington System", an elaborate set of rules and protocols devised by the Duchess and her ambitious and domineering comptroller, Sir John Conroy, rumoured to be the Duchess's lover. The system prevented the princess from meeting people whom her mother and Conroy deemed undesirable, was designed to render her weak and dependent upon them; the Duchess avoided the court because she was scandalised by the presence of King William's illegitimate children. Victoria shared a bedroom with her mother every night, studied with private tutors to a regular timetable, spent her play-hours with her dolls and her King Charles Spaniel, Dash, her lessons included French, German and Latin, but she spoke only English at home. In 1830, the Duchess of Kent and Conroy took Victoria across the centre of England to visit the Malvern Hills, stopping at towns and great country houses along the way. Similar journeys to oth

The early history of the site is unknown, although it was certainly settled some years before 1070 when William the Conqueror had a timber motte and bailey castle constructed. The focus of royal interest at that time was not the castle, but a small riverside settlement about 3 miles downstream established from the 7th century. From about the 8th century, high status people started to visit the site and this included royalty. From the 11th century the site's link with king Edward the Confessor is documented, but again, information about his use of the place is scant. After the Norman conquest of England, royal use of the site increased because it offered good access to woodlands and opportunities for hunting – a sport which practised military skills. Windsor Castle is noted in the Domesday Book under the entry for Clewer, the neighbouring manor to Windsor. Although this might seem strange, it occurred because plans for the castle had changed since 1070, more land had been acquired in Clewer on which to site a castle town.

This plan was not actioned until the early 12th century. Henry I – according to one chronicle – had rebuilt it, this followed the Norman kings' actions at other royal sites, such as Westminster, where larger and more magnificent accommodation was thought necessary for the new dynasty. King Henry married his second wife after the White Ship disaster; the settlement at Old Windsor transferred to New Windsor during the 12th century, although substantial planning and setting out of the new town did not take place until c. 1170, under Henry II, following the civil war of Stephen's reign. At about the same time, the present upper ward of the castle was rebuilt in stone. Windsor Bridge is the earliest bridge on the Thames between Staines and Reading, built at a time when bridge building was rare, it played an important part in the national road system, linking London with Reading and Winchester, but by diverting traffic into the new town, it underpinned the success of its fledgling economy. The town of New Windsor, as an ancient demesne of the Crown, was a privileged settlement from the start having the rights of a'free borough', for which other towns had to pay substantial fees to the king.

It had a merchant guild from the early 13th century and, under royal patronage, was made the chief town of the county in 1277, as part of its grant of royal borough status by Edward I's charter. Somewhat unusually, this charter gave no new rights or privileges to Windsor but codified the rights which it had enjoyed for many years. Windsor's position as chief town of Berkshire was short-lived, however, as people found it difficult to reach. Wallingford took over this position in the early 14th century; as a self-governing town Windsor enjoyed a number of freedoms unavailable to other towns, including the right to hold its own borough court, the right of membership and some financial independence. The town accounts of the 16th century survive in part, although most of the once substantial borough archive dating back to the 12th century was destroyed in the late 17th century. New Windsor was a nationally significant town in the Middle Ages one of the fifty wealthiest towns in the country by 1332.

Its prosperity came from its close association with the royal household. The repeated investment in the castle brought London merchants to the town in the late 13th century and provided much employment for townsmen; the development of the castle under Edward III, between 1350–68, was the largest secular building project in England of the Middle Ages, many Windsor people worked on this project, again bringing great wealth to the town. Although the Black Death in 1348 had reduced some towns' populations by up to 50%, in Windsor the building projects of Edward III brought money to the town, its population doubled: this was a'boom' time for the local economy. People came to the town from every part of the country, from continental Europe; the poet Geoffrey Chaucer held the honorific post of'Clerk of the Works' at Windsor Castle in 1391. The development of the castle continued in the late 15th century with the rebuilding of St G

Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in Berkshire, England. It is the best known and oldest of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth Hospital near Liverpool and Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire; the Broadmoor complex houses about 210 patients, all of whom are men since the female service closed in September 2007, with most of the women moving to a new service in Southall and the remainder moving to Rampton and elsewhere. At any one time there are approximately 36 patients on trial leave at other units. Most of the patients there have been diagnosed with severe mental illness. Most have either been convicted of serious crimes, or been found unfit to plead in a trial for such crimes; the average stay is six years, but this figure is skewed by a few patients who have stayed for over 30 years. The hospital's catchment area consists of four National Health Service regions: London, South East and South West.

It is managed by the West LondonNHS Trust. The hospital was first known as the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum, it was built to a design by Sir Joshua Jebb, an officer of the Corps of Royal Engineers, covered 53 acres within its secure perimeter. The first patient was a female admitted for infanticide on 27 May 1863. Notes described her as being'feeble minded; the first male patients arrived on 27 February 1864. The original building plan of five blocks, four for men and one for women was completed in 1868. A further male block was built in 1902. Due to overcrowding at Broadmoor, a branch asylum was constructed at Rampton and opened in 1912. Rampton was closed as a branch asylum at the end of 1919 and reopened as an institution for "mental defectives" rather than lunatics. During World War I Broadmoor's block 1 was used as a Prisoner-of-war camp, called Crowthorne War Hospital for mentally ill German soldiers. After the escape in 1952 of John Straffen, who murdered a local child, the hospital set up an alarm system, activated to alert people in the vicinity, as well as the public including those in the surrounding towns of Sandhurst, Wokingham and Bagshot, when any dangerous patient escapes.

It is based on World War II air raid sirens, a two-tone alarm sounds across the whole area in the event of an escape. It is tested every Monday morning at 10 am for two minutes, after which a single tone'all-clear' is sounded for a further two minutes. All schools in the area must keep procedures designed to ensure that in the event of a Broadmoor escape no child is out of the direct supervision of a member of staff. Sirens are located at Sandhurst School, Wellington College, Bracknell Forest council depot and other sites. Following the Peter Fallon QC inquiry into Ashworth Special Hospital which reported in 1999, found serious concerns about security and abuses resulting from poor management, it was decided to review the security at all three of the special hospitals in England; until this time each was responsible for maintaining its own security policies. This review was made the personal responsibility of Sir Alan Langlands, who at the time was chief executive of the English National Health Service.

The report that came out of the review initiated a new partnership whereby the Department of Health sets out a policy of safety, security directions, that all three special hospitals must adhere to. In 2003 the Victorian buildings at Broadmoor Hospital were declared'unfit for purpose' by the Commission for Healthcare Improvement. Broadmoor uses psychotherapy. One of the therapies available is the arts, patients are encouraged to participate in the Koestler Awards Scheme. One of the longest-detained patients at Broadmoor is Albert Haines, who set a legal precedent in 2011 when his mental health tribunal hearing was allowed to be public, where he argued that he has never been given the type of counselling he has always sought; because of its high walls and other visible security features, the inaccurate news reporting it has received in the past, the hospital is assumed to be a prison by members of the public. Many of its patients are sent to it via the criminal justice system, its original design brief incorporated an essence of addressing criminality in addition to mental illness.

However, nearly all staff are members of the Prison Officers Association, as opposed to other health service unions such as UNISON and the Royal College of Nursing. Jimmy Noak, Broadmoor's director of nursing in 2011, in response to concerns about the amount of resources going into the treatment of those in the facility given the harm some of them had caused to victims or their families, commented,'It's not fair, but what is the alternative? If these people committed crimes because they were suffering from an acute mental illness they should be in hospital.' The first medical superintendent was John Meyer. His assistant, William Orange CB, MD, FRCP, LSA, succeeeded him. Orange established "a management style, admired", he advised the Home office on how to approach criminal insanity. Orange was in charge from 1870-1886. From its opening, until 1948, Broadmoor was managed by a Council of Supervision, appointed by and reporting to

The Birmingham Gazette, known for much of its existence as Aris's Birmingham Gazette, was a newspaper, published and circulated in Birmingham, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Founded as a weekly publication in 1741, it moved to daily production in 1862, was absorbed by the Birmingham Post in 1956; the newspaper's title was Birmingham Gazette and General Correspondent from 1741. In November 1956 the Birmingham Gazette was absorbed by the Birmingham Post; the merger led to the publication of The Birmingham Post & Birmingham Gazette which ran until 1964. The Gazette was founded as the Birmingham Gazette and General Correspondent by Thomas Aris, a stationer from London who had moved to Birmingham in May 1740 and started a bookselling and printing business in the High Street; the first edition was issued on 16 November 1741, just under ten years after the town's first known newspaper, the Birmingham Journal. By 1743 it had absorbed its rival Warwick and Staffordshire Gazette –, founded in London in 1737 and moved to Birmingham in 1741 – and become the town's only newspaper.

Although decried by its rivals as a "Mere register of sales or... broker's guide" due its high number of advertisements, Asa Briggs described the eighteenth century Gazette as "one of the most lucrative and important provincial papers, ranking with the Liverpool Mercury and the Edinburgh Courant". Historical copies of the Gazette, dating back to 1741, are available to search and view in digitised form at the British Newspaper Archive. John Thackray Bunce

The Scottish people or Scots, are a nation and Celtic ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged from an amalgamation of two Celtic-speaking peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland in the 9th …

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. On 1 May 1876, she adopted the additional title of Empress of India. — Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and …

Assassination is the act of killing a prominent person for either political, religious or monetary reasons.An assassination may be prompted by religious, political or military motives. It is an act that may be done for financial gain, to avenge a grievance, from a desire to acquire fame or …

Windsor is a historic market town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family. — The town is situated 21.7 miles west of Charing Cross …

Poetry is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and rhythmic qualities of language—such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre—to evoke meanings in addition to, or in place of, the prosaic ostensible meaning. — Poetry …

Eton College is an English 13–18 independent boarding school and sixth form for boys in the parish of Eton, near Windsor in Berkshire. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor, as a sister institution to King's College, Cambridge, making …

Lady Sarah Wilson, RRC, born Lady Sarah Isabella Augusta Spencer-Churchill, became one of the first woman war correspondents in 1899, when she was recruited by Alfred Harmsworth to cover the Siege of Mafeking for the Daily Mail during the Second Boer War. — Family …

Weston-super-Mare, also known as just Weston is a seaside town in North Somerset, England, on the Bristol Channel 18 miles south west of Bristol between Worlebury Hill and Bleadon Hill. It includes the suburbs of Oldmixon, West Wick and Worle. Its population at the 2011 census was 76,143 …

In law, treason is criminal disloyalty to the state. It is a crime that covers some of the more extreme acts against one's nation or sovereign. This usually includes things such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military …

William Topaz McGonagall was a Scottish weaver, poet and actor. He won notoriety as an extremely bad poet who exhibited no recognition of, or concern for, his peers' opinions of his work. — He wrote about 200 poems, including "The Tay Bridge Disaster" and "The Famous …

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as The Manchester Guardian, and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers The Observer and The Guardian Weekly, the Guardian is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to …

Broadmoor Hospital is a high-security psychiatric hospital at Crowthorne in Berkshire, England. It is the best known and oldest of the three high-security psychiatric hospitals in England, the other two being Ashworth Hospital near Liverpool and Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire. — The …

The broad definition of regicide is the deliberate killing of a monarch, or the person responsible for the killing of a person of royalty. — In the British tradition, it refers to the judicial execution of a king after a trial, reflecting …

Sir Samuel Wilson was an Irish-born Australian pastoralist and politician, and later a British Member of Parliament. — Wilson was born in Ballycloughan, County Antrim, Ireland, in 1832. He was educated at Ballymena and at first intended taking up civil engineering …

The Birmingham Gazette, known for much of its existence as Aris's Birmingham Gazette, was a newspaper that was published and circulated in Birmingham, England, from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Founded as a weekly publication in 1741, it moved to daily production in 1862, and was …

John Duke Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge, PC was an English lawyer, judge and Liberal politician. He held the posts, in turn, of Solicitor General for England and Wales, Attorney General for England and Wales, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas and Lord Chief Justice …

The pound sterling, commonly known as the pound and less commonly referred to as sterling, is the official currency of the United Kingdom, Jersey, Guernsey, the Isle of Man, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, the British Antarctic Territory, and Tristan da …

The Hatter's hat shows an example of the old pre-decimal system: the hat costs half a guinea (10 shillings and 6 pence).

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, king of Sparta. The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology and has been narrated through many works of Greek literature, most …

The Indian Head eagle was a $10 gold piece or eagle struck by the United States Mint continuously from 1907 until 1916, and then irregularly until 1933. The obverse and reverse were designed by sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, originally commissioned for use on other denominations. He was suffering …

Saint-Gaudens's 1905 inaugural medal reverse contains a standing eagle similar to the one on the $10 piece.

Saint-Gaudens's model of the Liberty design for the cent. Roosevelt insisted on adding a man's Indian feather headdress.

A metal model for the double eagle by Saint-Gaudens; the design was adapted for the eagle

Mint Director George E. Roberts (shown on his Mint medal, designed by Barber) left office on July 31, 1907.

In early 18th century Colonial America, engravers began experimenting with copper plates as an alternative medium to wood. Applied to the production of paper currency, copper-plate engraving allowed for greater detail and production during printing. It was the transition to steel engraving that …

The Jaguar E-Type, or the Jaguar XK-E for the North American market, is a British sports car that was manufactured by Jaguar Cars Ltd between 1961 and 1975. Its combination of beauty, high performance, and competitive pricing established the model as an icon of the motoring world. The E-Type's 150 …

The first production open two-seater a 1961 E-Type Series 1 3.8-Litre roadster

England became inhabited more than 800,000 years ago, as the discovery of stone tools and footprints at Happisburgh in Norfolk has revealed. The earliest evidence for early modern humans in North West Europe, a jawbone discovered in Devon at Kents Cavern in 1927, was re-dated in 2011 to between …

Alfredo James Pacino is an American actor and filmmaker. Pacino has had a career spanning more than five decades, during which time he has received numerous accolades and honors both competitive and honorary, among them an Academy Award, two Tony …

Zoe Saldana-Perego is an American actress and dancer. Following her performances with the theater group Faces, Saldana made her screen debut in a 1999 episode of Law & Order. — Saldana's film career began a year later with Center Stage, where she …

Eric Banadinović, known professionally as Eric Bana, is an Australian actor and comedian. He began his career in the sketch comedy series Full Frontal before his first movie, comedy-drama The Castle, got him noticed by global audiences. Soon after he gained critical …

Diamond is a solid form of the element carbon with its atoms arranged in a crystal structure called diamond cubic. At room temperature and pressure, another solid form of carbon known as graphite is the chemically stable form, but diamond almost never converts to it. Diamond has the highest …

The slightly misshapen octahedral shape of this rough diamond crystal in matrix is typical of the mineral. Its lustrous faces also indicate that this crystal is from a primary deposit.

One face of an uncut octahedral diamond, showing trigons (of positive and negative relief) formed by natural chemical etching

The extreme hardness of diamond in certain orientations makes it useful in materials science, as in this pyramidal diamond embedded in the working surface of a Vickers hardness tester.

Silver certificates are a type of representative money issued between 1878 and 1964 in the United States as part of its circulation of paper currency. They were produced in response to silver agitation by citizens who were angered by the Fourth Coinage Act, which had effectively placed the United …

The history of Wales begins with the arrival of human beings in the region thousands of years ago. Neanderthals lived in what is now Wales, or Cymru in Welsh, at least 230,000 years ago, while Homo sapiens arrived by about 31,000 BC. However, continuous habitation by modern humans dates from the …

The papal tiara is a crown that was worn by popes of the Catholic Church from as early as the 8th century to the mid-20th. It was last used by Pope Paul VI in 1963 and only at the beginning of his reign. — The name "tiara" refers to the entire headpiece, no matter how many crowns, circlets or diadems …

Christopher Hemsworth is an Australian actor. He rose to prominence playing Kim Hyde in the Australian TV series Home and Away. Hemsworth has also appeared in the science fiction action film Star Trek, the thriller adventure A Perfect Getaway, the …

Amal Clooney is a Lebanese-British barrister at Doughty Street Chambers, specialising in international law and human rights. Her clients include the likes of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in his fight against extradition; the …

Hugh John Mungo Grant is an English actor and film producer. Grant has received a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, and an Honorary César for his work. As of 2018, his films have grossed a total of nearly US$3 billion worldwide from 29 theatrical releases. He first received attention …

The Iron Crown of Lombardy is both a reliquary and one of the oldest royal insignias of Christendom. It was made in the Early Middle Ages, consisting of a circlet of gold and jewels fitted around a central silver band, which …